I bet that Balloon Juice will continue to be filled with absolutely unfettered, uncritical, ultra-aggressive support of Obama.

I have a prediction, too: Freddie will continue ignore the many times front pagers and commenters have criticized the Obama Administration on this blog to win the “mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the purest of them all” contest, happening regularly at L’Hôte.

I have a prediction: Obama will continue to earn the absolutely unfettered, uncritical, ultra-aggressive support I give him. As long as he is the greatest president of my lifetime, I will continue to treat him as such.

I have one major beef with Obama, and it’s a big one: He should have pushed for a breakup of the biggest banks. I don’t know if he could have gotten it done, but it’s so important to our future that he should have tried.

But overall, his record, under the harshest of conditions, has been little short of miraculous. He’s the best president in my 46 years, and probably for whatever I have left. Where are we going to find a candidate to follow this act?

And cue the unfettered shouting down of anyone daring to mention DROOOONNZ as a bad thing! Because that’s what Freddie says we do! Shout people down, that is! And I really REALLY mean it this time. So consider yourself SHOUTED DOWN, because I’m an OBOT!

Shouldn’t someone who teaches rhetoric and composition be capable of proof and persuasion and less prone to hyperbole? Or is crocodile-teared narcissism what students learn these days? It would certainly explain a lot of the essays I get.

Sshhhhh! Not in front of the Baby (i.e. Pule-itical Absurder, a/k/a Headcase_75), he still thinks Rmoney’s going to be Preznit. Don’t tell him about Santa Claus, either – his head be a-splodin’ if he hears that.

Drones, Drones, Drones. Until the super lefties come up with a plan to stop religious nutcases from incited hatred and violence against American and Western civilians I will relunctantly accept the drones strikes.

So exactly what is Freddie and the rest of the super lefties plans to stop religious fanatics from inciting violence against American civilians then hiding out in lawless countries that cant or want arrest the?

@schrodinger’s cat: I don’t wish to be rude to Freddie, but I agree. His writing style is (IMHO)congested and pretentious. I’ve enjoyed some of his posts but tend to lose interest quickly in the majority of them. Perhaps he/she says the same about my own comments.

I bet that Balloon Juice will continue to be filled with absolutely unfettered, uncritical, ultra-aggressive support of Obama.

Translation: It’s not that I can’t make compelling arguments to support my positions, it’s that everyone there is completely impervious to reason. So taking my marbles and going home and then posting emo criticisms from my room is actually a principled response.

We at BJ have a COMPELLING INTEREST in being ardently pro-Obama in this election: unless he wins, we won’t be able to indulge our fondness for firebagging, ever again! Firebagging is so much more fun than bitter grapes.
:=)

@MikeJ:
And remember, after 9/11, Bush belittled Clinton’s cruise missile strike on an al Qaeda training camp that was intended to kill bin Laden by saying “I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt.” Maybe if the Republicans had treated going after al Qaeda as a serious foreign policy move rather than an attempt at a “wag the dog” scenario, we would have gotten bin Laden before he could put the 9/11 attacks in motion.

Prediction: In about half a century, there will be a left-liberal President running for re-election. He or she will have attained positive, if not incremental, advancements on issues on which he or she campaigned for election in the first place, will be subject to all sorts of crazy-ass rumors originating from the rabid right, and will have disappointed some elements of the liberal-left coalition by either (a) not achieving as much as he or she theoretically could in a world with zero to minimal opposition or (b) compromising on an issue that no ones else cares enough to vote over.

And this President will be called a corporate/warmongering sell-out on whatever platform they can crawl upon, and they will pine for the day when the nation can have honest, progressive champions like Barack Obama once again.

I certainly hope Obama wins, I voted for the man in my securely blue state, but.. I’m among the crowd that worries that, even after four years of dealing with these rabid wolverines, he still might try for some Grand Bargain with the GOP in regards to The Deficit and cutting Social Security benefits. Please prove me wrong, Mr. President.

How is a drone worse than a jet fighter or helicopter gun ship or heavy bombers and cruise missiles that carry far greater ordinance?

What is it about the unmanned aspect of an aircraft that freaks them out?

A drone carries two 18 lbs missiles, but a B-1 carries 125,000 lbs of explosives. As Nate Silver’s math would say, that’s quite a difference (36 lbs vs 125,000 lbs). And yet they seem comfortable with a B-1 because it’s not a “robot”.

I seem to recall a reasonable number of posts by Cole that criticize the Obama Administration’s use of drones. I don’t remember any such posts by Freddy, because he doesn’t do himself any favors by having such long posts — he epitomizes tl;dr for me. Funny thing is that I often read the Levenson posts even though they are even longer.

It’s hard to take Freddie or those who agree with him seriously when they’ve never presented a coherent explanation of how things will change for the better if we all withold our votes for Obama.

They can’t claim there’s 50% of the population that share their views on civil liberties or drones. They can’t claim that Republicans will be better on civil liberties/drones – we all know they’re likely to be far worse.

Elections are important, maybe none more than the present one. But the important work that needs to be done to protect our civil liberties, to rethink the drone policy – that’s for once we know we are safe on tax policy/health care/gay rights/womens rights/environmental regulation/immigration/education.

What is funny is the purity trolls in the blogsphere. I mean, c’mon now….really? I lived through 6 years of Nixon, 8 years of Reagan, 4 more of bush41 and another 8 years of bush43. I really don’t want to see 4 or 8 of Romney. That drives me to support Obama even though I think his policies wrt The Patriot Act, Medical Marijuana, drone assasinations are all areas I do not support. Still, Romney would be worse, much much worse. That’s why I’m voting for the Kenyan So$hulist.

I know that raising this is a waste of energy, but do people like Freddie think that no innocent civilians were killed in military actions before Obama became president? How many US presidents do they think have squeaky clean hands in the areas of civil liberties and military action?

Especially when US politics of the last 30 years is a series of examples of the left staying home and the country moving right. It’s the left’s version of the laffer curve – it didn’t work last time, so this time we’ll do it even harder, and then it’ll work.

@David Koch: I’ve been to that rodeo. It goes like this: it’s not about drones, the weapon, it’s about dead innocents. Then you say, OK, has Obama done things that created more dead innocents than other presidents? Is he reckless and blasé about killing innocent people? And then the other guy says, Oh, that’s some praise, relatively fewer dead brown children. Then you say, Well, guns and bombs kill people too, but no one spends a lot of time saying that they can no longer support the president because his soldiers use guns and bombs.

And then the next time it comes up, it’s back to “flying death robots” all over again.

Nobody cares about your pet issue enough to derail the entire Obama presidency over it. Get over yourselves.

Also, too: If it isn’t drones it would be something else. No president will ever be good enough for these people — they’ll just keep shifting the goalposts leftwards. Remember, there were folks who called FDR a corporate whore and sellout.

I know that raising this is a waste of energy, but do people like Freddie think that no innocent civilians were killed in military actions before Obama became president? How many US presidents do they think have squeaky clean hands in the areas of civil liberties and military action?

Obama is the first POTUS to ever use targeted military force against US citizens…

If you pretend Abraham Lincoln and the years 1861-1865 never existed.

But seriously, Sherman razing the Georgia countryside was more gentlemanly, because he didn’t use drones.

@cathyx: You might have the makings for a good post here; it would be very interesting to read the collective list of complaints about O’s presidency (as offered by BJer’s).

I suspect we already know the top five or so: little activity on global warming, tepid support of LGBT issues, failure to prosecute the Bush administration criminals, a meak response to the money-pigs of Wall St., etc.

@David Koch: The two aspects that I think are serious concerns are that there is no risk of casualties, which is one of the chief public opinion constraints on war, and that the drone operations are run by the CIA, which institutionally and legally is much more “black” than the military, making it much harder to have any accountability. (The military by definition isn’t a model of openness, but a lot of its activities are public and its entire budget isn’t a secret.)

A lot of the wailing and gnashing seems to be about civilian casualties, and on that point, I agree; what’s the difference between drones and any other weapon?

@RP: That is why I think criticizing Obama for “civil liberties”/executive power matters is about like criticizing him for wearing a coat and tie too much. Not that it wouldn’t be nice for it to happen less, but it’s a default setting for the gig.

And I predict that Freddie will try to capture the essense of his sweet smelling farts in a bottle and give Chanel a run for the money. Or perhaps will finally sue Massengil for trademark enfringement. Either way, he is in for a big windfall.

@The Moar You Know: True that. There is a short list of very important concerns that this administration needs to get right (by first realizing how wrong they are), and that process can wait until Nov. 7.

Exactly. How about FDR’s internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans? People like the firebaggers tend to talk in glowing terms about FDR. I can’t help but think that racism is unfortunately not limited to folks on the right.

@slightly_peeved: Exactly. What was 2010 if not a lurch to the right as a result of dems/progressives staying home. If we had expanded dem representation in the house and senate, instead of it contracting, guantanamo might very well be closed by now.

No president will ever be good enough for these people—they’ll just keep shifting the goalposts leftwards.

That’s because the whole ritual isn’t really about the president, or even politics, it’s about a small group of people deciding something, anything, is their precious thing that only they properly appreciate, and no one else really Gets It the way they do. If everyone agreed with you, you wouldn’t be special anymore. “You’re all a bunch of reflexively conformist corporatist tribalists, not like me and my, um, smaller group of likeminded people who arrived at our overwhelming agreement through good taste and independent critical thought.”

I read that (ok skimmed some, but he does write way way too long). It’s not about Obama at all. It’s about him vowing to hold the internet accountable for these imaginary promises he believes have been made to him.

Where did he ever get the impression that someone saying, “Change takes work,” means that they personally are committing to execute his personal policy preferences? It’s some kind of whacked convolution of the whole voting/holding accountable thing.

Exactly. How about FDR’s internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans? People like the firebaggers tend to talk in glowing terms about FDR. I can’t help but think that racism is unfortunately not limited to folks on the right.

Any POC pretty much knows that; occasionally, some white progressives will deign to listen to us and nod in agreement.

FWIW I’m far, far to the left of BHO, but it’s goofballs like FdB who keep me grounded and “pragmatic.” That said, I’ll rail for him to continue to post here, and John’s wisdom in keeping him around – Shine on you Crazy Diamond.

One of the things I admire about the left is that we don’t blindly follow our boss. I don’t think Boy Blunder would have been half as bad a President if the right would have tried to hold him to some level of sanity.

The net result is the goopers move in lock-step and get a lot more done without all the whining and wailing that happens with the Dems. We fight with each other lot & the result is often mixed but its a lot better for the long-term survival of the country and the party than the alternative.

It pisses me off when people here get their noses out of joint & start throwing terms like firebagger and obat around. We are not a monolith & we all have the right to disagree on the details. I just wish we could do it without the animosity often displayed.

@WWStBreitbartD: I doubt you had anything posted worth berating – other than “teh Obama is as bad as teh Bush because drones and shut up!” You know, you could start your own blog instead of criticizing another blogger – I am sure “asshat useless” is still available for you to use.

If anything, we’re at the safest and least violent period in our history, and Obama probably has the least blood on his hands of any US president. The national security state and our overall militarism stinks, but, as noted, it’s the default position for our country and judging Obama on that issue alone is bizarre.

Moreover, the endless focus on the fact that he attacked a “US citizen” is really strange IMO. The 4th amendment says nothing about citizenship — it applies to law enforcement actions on US soil (do people like Freddie think that non-citizens inside our borders aren’t entitled to the protection of the fourth amendment?). If someone is a military target outside of the US, his or her citizenship is irrelevant. They might not be an appropriate target or perhaps the President should not have been given the military authority in the first place, but those are separate issues.

Finally, I looked at some of Freddie’s comments over at LGM, and, while I don’t want to be mean, I get the sense that he’s just not very bright. Or at least he’s not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, a dangerous combination.

@David Koch: Pfft, you’re practically an Obot for how piss-poor a progressive that makes you. I won’t vote for anyone until we give America back to the indigenous population and kick my ass back out. It’s unconscionable to perpetuate this unjust system.

For a group of the angriest people from the left on the internet, politics, especially presidential politics provides an excellent therapeutic platform to make daddy pay for what he did or didn’t do when they were but sprouts.

@dedc79:
Here I disagree. Congress is damn near unanimous, Dem and GOP, that Guantanamo will stay open and those prisoners will not be released. Hell, they retroactively made Bush’s crimes legal. I don’t know what to do about it, because I don’t have a clue why it’s so in the first place. These people can’t agree about ANYTHING else. They fight like dogs over the military budget, previously their most famous sacred cow. Guantanamo – they ALL agree about that.

@FlipYrWhig: You laugh, But I went to school with a girl like that. Married a member of a local tribe and her lily white ass now insists on calling anyone not “Native” oppressors. Everyone’s got their pet issue, some just don’t know the meaning of the word moderation.

My favorite Sherman quote: If I owned hell and Texas, I’d live in hell and rent out Texas.*

If you want to get back to the topic, how about “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.” I think it’s directly relevant to the issue of drone warfare. The problem with our drone war in Afghanistan is the war in Afghanistan part, not the drone part; any other way of making war would be at least as bad for the innocent bystanders.

I’m with you. I see it as a positive good in terms of waging operations against a dispersed, small but fanatical enemy. Despite the sad instances where the drones were misdirected or the intelligence was off and civilians have been killed, it is the most humane way to wage war compared to scorching the entire place with napalm and carpet bombing or massive invasions.

@LanceThruster:
My man William T. had some good lines. I’m rather partial to

If they want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their place. I know thousands and millions of good people who at simple notice would come to North Alabama and accept the elegant houses and plantations there. If the people of Huntsville think different, let them persist in war three years longer, and then they will not be consulted. Three years ago by a little reflection and patience they could have had a hundred years of peace and prosperity, but they preferred war; very well. Last year they could have saved their slaves, but now it is too late. All the powers of earth cannot restore to them their slaves, any more than their dead grandfathers. Next year their lands will be taken, for in war we can take them, and rightfully, too, and in another year they may beg in vain for their lives. A people who will persevere in war beyond a certain limit ought to know the consequences. Many, many peoples with less pertinacity have been wiped out of national existence.

His quote from the beginning of the war showed greater foresight than most people, also, too:

You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.

What the hell is Freddie’s problems with drones anyway? I am as Firebagger as they come and my only issue with drones is the concern that the emergent AI which arrives in our lifetime will use our unmanned weaponry to even more easily subjugate us after the nuclear holocaust it unleashes.

What exactly is so vastly different about drones as compared to the fighter jets we have been utilizing for decades for surgical airstrikes and air support?

Seriously what is up with this guy’s hardon for drones? The AI is like 50 years away, Obama has other bigger issues to despise him for (like the throwaway mentions of the drug war).

@Rob in DC: It’s because “drones” is really a shorthand for “unchecked executive power,” which was the big civil libertarian cause celebre under Bush, so you can show your street cred by busting out the same criticisms of Obama you did of Bush.

But what’s dumb about it to me is that it turns the issue into “My stricken conscience is wounded by Obama’s use of unchecked executive power, someone please hold me lest I faint” instead of, you know, figuring out a way to check that power in the first place. Shame and guilt aren’t going to do it. Legislative changes have a shot. So, if you really care the way you say you do, dry your eyes and work on that.

And I am totally partial to William T. Sherman. He’s the guy I want on my side in a fight. But Grant was a wonderful writer. If you haven’t done it yet, read his memiors. Awesome stuff.

I have read Grant’s memoirs- John Keegan recommended them very highly- and found them generally enjoyable, though they would have been even better with a good set of well annotated maps. I’m also inclined to agree with Keegan that Grant is unfairly maligned as a general. He is portrayed as a butcher, but even in the Wilderness Campaign he tried his hardest to get what he wanted by maneuver rather than frontal assault; he was just working in too small a space for maneuver to work as well as he needed. When he had the space, as he did outside of Vicksburg, he was capable of maneuvering with the best of them. And he clearly had a better grasp of the large scale strategy of the war than any other commanding general.

But what’s dumb about it to me is that it turns the issue into “My stricken conscience is wounded by Obama’s use of unchecked executive power, someone please hold me lest I faint” instead of, you know, figuring out a way to check that power in the first place. Shame and guilt aren’t going to do it. Legislative changes have a shot. So, if you really care the way you say you do, dry your eyes and work on that.

So the executive (who we have come to depend on as a source of dynamic change in our society) has no role in changing egregious behavior? The executive gets a pass?

@Rob in DC: The issue is various, but with many it is about due process and transparency plus a healthy wariness for the way the next president is likely to reinforce and then expand the intrusions of the predecessor.

I think Freedie just doesn’t admit to himself that his main problem is simply not believing in the eternal fog of democracy, and therefore democracy itself.

Imperfection of policy, that is usually obvious and the trade off for electing our leaders every so often, to give everyone some power. Even a minority that often dissents simply to define themselves different than the majority.

It is frustrating, especially for the young that are full of idealism and afflicted with impatience. Democracy is always a never completed construction job, and you build it, usually, one piece at a time. The gift we get from our imperfect form of government with imperfect policies, is change delivered without tanks and artillery fire. Hopefully

@Keith G: Here’s how I see it. The executive has powers, and wants to expand those relative to the other branches. The debate over indefinite detention was really about how the legislature gave a power to the executive as a branch that this executive didn’t seek and has promised not to use. But the executive will ALWAYS stand up for its rights not to be bound by the other branches, regardless of who happens to occupy the offices within them.

So if you don’t want the executive to have that power, you need to give it to some other entity, or legally ban it. Otherwise the executive will simply say, “OK, sure, we believe we have that power, but we totally won’t ever use it,” which is no improvement.

Ergo, if you think the executive has too much power already, you can try to shame them out of using it, but I don’t think that’s going to work, and wouldn’t be much of a solution to the larger problem anyway. The only real solution is to take that power away.

It’s the difference between having nuclear weapons that you pledge never to use and having disarmament.

@Keith G: Or, to be blunter about it, I expect the executive branch to move towards expanding its own power, irrespective of whether the presidency is held by a Democrat or a Republican. Executive power is all about efficiency and decisiveness and speed. Legislative power, by contrast, is all about deliberation and delay. Executives don’t want legislatures to tie their hands, just like cops don’t want lawyers to tie their hands. Stopping them from that expansive tendency isn’t done by appealing to the goodness of their hearts, it’s done by making laws and policy.

Haven’t read the thread (yet, if I find myself with the time), but let me just say: geez, what a prick. He’s got the keys to do a post here if he’s got a problem with us; no need to go around insulting us behind our backs.

@Keith G: I think that the whole concept of a government with checks and balances is based on each of the branches being interested in maintaining, if not expanding, its own power. If the legislative branch punts on its responsibilities, the executive won’t necessarily do the same. We need leaders in all branches who are willing and capable of doing their jobs. It may be Obotty of me, but I tend to think that if Congress gets around to sunsetting the AUMF, for example, some of the things about which people complain with decrease.

@Freddie deBoer:
Freddie, you really are a see-through, and very childish twerp.
Obviously you don’t bother reading the blog(not surprising, given how overtly self-centered you are), and obviously YOU got the result you expected.

@Freddie deBoer: You know, it’s too bad that neither of us knows anyone with both access to the front page here and belief in a counter narrative, and motivation to compose and post such right where everyone would have to deal with it.
Just think of what that might look like–a front pager on Balloon-Juice saying something with which others on the blog disagreed, and engaging those people in conversation.
I wonder where we could find such a soul.

@Soonergrunt: You jest, but I feel bad for Cole. He’s tried a couple of times to get some dissenting voices and come up snake eyes. I think it’s a great idea! And what an opportunity for a young writer with an interest in politics.

I hope he has better luck with the ladies than he does with these callow ciphers, E. D. and now F de B.

The Bush years aligned the anarchist/youthfully idealist left with mainstream liberalism. Some people ended up being in the Obama coalition that do not exactly share his view of government. Did Greenwald endorse Obama in 2008? I don’t know, but these people do not share the focus on economic policy that mainstream liberalism does.

Didn’t E.D. eventually have some sort of epiphany? (In a good way, that is.) I thought I remembered something like that happening, but I’m losing braim cells daily, and so I am tending to forget stuff.

Plus, I’m tending to forget stuff.

Freddie, on the other hand, seems to be in perpetual drones-and-whine mode. I read something of his from a coupla months ago, and it was more of the “Balloon Juice commenters are mean to anyone who dares to question their Lord and Master Obama.”

@SFAW: IIRC (and I’m forgetting stuff too) ED was epiphanizing out of one side of his mouth to BJers while saying something wholly other to Forbes or LOOG or some such. It was a scandal! A blogscandal!

And, I believe, m_c was 100% correct about him. That creeped everyone out.

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